Installation
"Lost Spaces"
Dalit Sharon & Eldad Shaltiel

1. Stadiums
Outside there is a stadium. Inside the stadium, Dalit Sharon and Eldad Shaltiel have constructed another stadium, or structure similar to a stadium. They propose that we dwell upon the similarity. They suggest that we compare the large stadium outside with the small stadium inside.
A stadium is a structure particularly suitable as a basis for comparing periods, comparing lifestyles. By chance, I attended a conference in Napoli while writing this article. I visited Pompeii. It occurred to me that one thousand nine hundred and twenty seven years, nearly two thousand years, have elapsed since that city was buried, and the stadium is the only structure that appears to have been built only yesterday. Since that time, we have totally changed all the structures we build: the homes we live in, our streets, our squares, our markets, our houses of prayer, our bath-houses, our theatres. But we have hardly made any changes to the stadiums: the same elliptic shape, the same internal circle within which players play, the same circles that slowly expand, as well as slowly rise up - row upon row of seating for spectators. The same open sky above. The same huge dimensions: dimensions of space - to contain masses of people, and of strength - so that the structure does not collapse under the weight of the masses. The same box for dignitaries (Caesar or television).

If stadiums built by generations so far apart, and cultures so very different, are in fact so similar - they are also an excellent backdrop for asking: so what are the differences? What differentiates a stadium built by Israelis at the end of the 20th century from one built by Romans at the end of the 1st century? Maybe it is not the stadiums that have changed - it is the people who have changed. Structures are not only stone, engineering and strength of materials - they are also invested with what people who use them bring to them. People who brought gladiators into their stadiums imprinted into this huge elliptic structure something very different from people bringing soccer players to the stadiums, or rock stars for that matter.

The ancient, nearly constant architecture of the stadium is perceived differently, sensed differently, imaged differently, if it is the scene of bullfights or of athletic competitions. We undoubtedly sense a stadium differently after the crowd that fills it has undergone a war, or a disaster, or elation. Events that occur on the field have an impact on the field, and what spectators bring with them to the tribunes impacts on the tribunes.

People have always brought to the stadiums the ultra talented body of an athlete exerting himself, seen from afar. They have also brought the right of the crowd to shout and take an excited part in glory and in defeat. It is to the stadium that they have also brought the energy generated by numerous people from one another, people that want to become a crowd and want to mix with one another. Stadiums are the unmistakable sites for people at play. A spectator leaves gravity and seriousness at home. A spectator joins the crowd to relax from the pressing intimacy of family and work. For an hour or two, a spectator enters a world ruled by game rules, rules that combine fairness with amusement. In a game, victory is symbolic, not murderous (even the bloody victories of gladiators were only horrid symbols of much more gruesome wars that occurred on battlefields). In a game, identification with one team, and hatred for the opposing team, does not lead to wars. In a match, people revile the referee with age-old curses scarcely changed for generations, but they do not shoot. There is a kind of ease in the symbolism that fills the air. But symbols attract other symbols. Symbols outside the stadium. Symbols that we bring to the games stemming from our profound gravity. Symbols of violence that we bring to the symbols of the game.

We make the stadium, that was built thousands of years ago, into our own "Teddy" Stadium. And we infuse into soccer and into the tribunes, our Israeli anger, and our wars, as well as our Israeli hopes. This is what is imminent in the installation by Dalit Sharon and Eldad Shaltiel: what Teddy Stadium has assimilated from its Israeli environment, and what Teddy Stadium has instilled in the small model within its bowels. The artists offer us an opportunity to enter the large stadium and see it anew through the small stadium.

2. Pressure
Sharon and Shaltiel jointly chose to work in lead and glass. Lead is heavy, it bends under pressure and is a toxic material. Glass is a fragile, transparent material that does not bend under pressure. Architects have always constructed columns and pillars from heavy duty materials and walls from materials that aren't as strong. This is even truer of stadiums that are designed to support thousands of people. Here, the opposite is true: the columns that support the installation model are made of glass, while the curved rows supported by glass are made of lead. The glass supports the lead - but for how long?

We come to watch games so as to relax and relieve pressure and stress. Whereas here the artists tell us that even in entering our stadiums, we bring along pressure. Lead is so ever-present in our lives, in our wars, that we do not leave it behind us when we come to watch our ball games. The glass breaks in so many explosions, so close to our stadium, that even during our leisure time there is a sense of threat in the air. Some of the symmetric lead circles are crushed and collapse, without the support of columns. And all the glass pillars are threatened by the pressure of the heavy lead.

3. Plurality
The installation was created jointly by two artists. The expectation that a work of art be an expression of one personality is not realized in this work. Sharon and Shaltiel propose that we rethink this age-old expectation. Is it vital? Is it necessary? Is it true inside Teddy Stadium in 2006?

Eldad Shaltiel is a second generation glass artist. His father was a stained glass artist. Not many Israeli artists chose to work in glass. This may be because for us glass art is associated with church windows. Maybe because Jews were not glass artists in their past - in ancient times, this art form was Phoenician, in modern times - Palestinian from Hebron. The son tried to distance himself from his father and sculpted in other materials, but after many years, he reverted to glass. He does not work in stained glass. One of his most impressive works was a glass bunker. He stripped glass of its decorative dimension - as a window decorating a wall - and gave glass its threatening dimensions - the bunker from which we wage war. A glass bunker is a shelter constructed from the most fragile and most cutting of materials. It is absurd. It is a nightmare. Shaltiel suggests that we think about this absurdity, and not be confident that our bunkers offer us protection and security.

But the glass bunker is not only a monstrosity made of wounding material. It is also made of material that can be transparent (in Shaltiel's work, it is sometimes transparent, sometimes semi-transparent and sometimes opaque). It is possible, sometimes, to look through it. It is possible for light to pass through it. The bunker that Shaltiel built is one that, at least from a certain angle, can be looked through. It is not always murky. It is also possible to see and understand this hard bunker, that is ours, and it is bad if it remains in the dark for us. If we have bunkers, it's best we see them. And it's best that we also see the world outside through them. Maybe one day we'll emerge from our bunkers and into it.

Shaltiel brings something of this bunker into the current work. The model seems to shift - one moment it is a stadium, and the next a bunker. One instant the glass serves as the pillars of a rigid, metal, fortified and closed structure. The next instant, we find ourselves remembering that this is a place of play, and of beauty. There is beauty in the light that penetrates the glass into the installation. There is also gentleness in the black material that is reflected in the milky glass. There is nobility in the black and white than needs no additional colors. It also has its own hues and shades: the lead's blackness sometimes turns gray, or at least has the opportunity to look gray. "The reckoning has not yet ended" wrote Yossef Haim Brenner, when he has a tiny spark, a glimmer of optimism. Something of the hope and beauty of stained glass - through the son coming to terms with his father - penetrates the pressured and very Israeli Teddy field. Some of the light penetrates the gloom.

Sharon reached this installation from a very different place. In her previous works, she painted and installed buildings. These were primarily buildings characterized by straight geometric lines, combining simplicity with severity. She focused on Israeli schools, which expressed the dream of a new beginning, with fortress-like stiffness and rigidity. You don't have to go too far to reach the sources of Sharon's work: straight-lined Bauhaus buildings of simple design that were the pride of architecture of the new Jews in Israel. To this day many Israelis find the very essence of their Israeli identity, of their self respect, in the renouncement by Bauhaus builders in Tel Aviv during the 1930s and 1940s - a renouncement of elegance, of frills, of construction for the rich.

Sharon confronted this architectural infrastructure of ours and asked what has happened sixty-seventy years after their construction. She did not forget that the sons of these Bauhaus builders, the next generation of architects, dedicated many years to what is now known as Brutalism. They became devoted to gray concrete, they exposed the framework and foundations of their building, and abolished the distinction between facade and skeleton. They believed that they were more principled than their predecessors, but they were also more pessimistic. Their belief in simple beauty was diminished. They wished to expose both beauty and ugliness in one. It is not incidental that they worked during a period in which optimism gave way to disappointment, and beliefs showed their zealousness.

Sharon chose the simple and symmetrical structures we built and, in her paintings, asked what is there beyond them. In her works, we see the monastic severity of straight lines. Lacking grace, softness, or flexibility. Sometimes, her straight lined walls are heartless walls. They hide the light. They are a utopia that has decayed and left only a typical Israeli difficulty in creating beauty, or at least in leaving room for beauty.

But always, in Sharon's work, there is a crack in the severity, a crack through which a ray of light, of hope, penetrates. In some of her works she even exposes, from these symmetrical structures, a geometric and abstract beauty, a levity, a respect for the logical and democratic.

From these sources, Shaltiel and Sharon arrive at this stadium within a stadium. This may be the moment to add one more dimension to their work. Both are artists who do not place ego at the hub of their creations. This worthy tradition actually exists in Israeli art. Tamar Geter once wrote "Art has never engaged me as an experience-based methodology, as a personal story, or expression of personality. It does engage me in its ability to "think" and describe social processes within which it is created" (Thoughts about Paintings, 1976-1989, Kav, 10, 1990). This may be an extreme statement, even in relation to Tamar Geter's own work. Something related to experiences, something personal, does indeed permeate her work. But as the simple, clean lined buildings were the pride of Israeli culture, there was also a dimension, or direction that was guarded and cautious of an ego that is too strong, too dominant, that "pours" and submerges itself on the world. Dalit Sharon and Eldad Shaltiel join this direction. They propose that we first take the time to think about our environment, about our stadiums, and only then find their personalities in their works.

This is also the reason for their collaboration. The dialog between two artists creates the total work, and not only the personal energies of a single artist. It also speaks to us of pluralism in Israeli society. This is an installation in Jerusalem, in a year which is not a year of peace and not a year of war, in a stadium where people indulge both fun and hatred, near a neighborhood that is ultra-religious and near a secular university, between Jews from the west and those from the east, in a city for which Jews and Arabs have never ceased to fight. Dalit Sharon and Eldad Shaltiel have constructed an installation in which nothing is made of a single material, or originates from a single idea, or references a single culture.

The partnership between glass and lead is not an easy one. There is no single tradition that links stained glass with Bauhaus. There is no fluid connection between a bunker and soccer. The spectators and players coming to "Teddy", as well as the artists and spectators coming to the small gallery located inside the stadium - bring cultures that are very different from one another. But they do not exist separately. They have changed under joint pressure. They were poisoned by joint wars. They will be refined and cleansed by the penetration of joint rays of light. The lead may break the glass. But it still has a chance to exist alongside the glass. And also, together with the glass, to create something new. Not without tension. Not without fear. But also - not without hope. Sharon and Shaltiel's small twisting stadium does not want to deprive the large stadium above it of its cathartic joy. Or at least, of the chance of cathartic joy. It just says that the road is difficult.

Article by: Nisim Kalderon